Wait, what? What propaganda haven't they lived up to that was revealed by Wikileaks? As far as I can tell, the worst thing the military has done in the current campaigns was the Abu Ghraib scandal. I like reading Wikileaks stuff, but it seems to me that anyone who pays attention to the news and such will have a good idea of what the US military is capable of, and what it is doing. Some people were surprised by the Wikileaks releases, but that's because they don't pay attention.

That said, I really liked reading about US diplomats opinions of French racial issues. Or Yemen's attempts to take credit for US actions. Stuff like that is really fun to read.

What propaganda haven't they lived up to that was revealed by Wikileaks?The US military likes to pretend their strikes are very precise and kills few civilians. The Afghan and Iraq war documents show that they fail to disclose many civilian deaths.

Hundreds of civilians have been wounded or killed by coalition forces in several instances that were not previously revealed. The press listed several examples of such previously unreported incidents of civilian injuries and deaths. David Leigh of The Guardian wrote:

They range from the shootings of individual innocents to the often massive loss of life from air strikes, which eventually led President Hamid Karzai to protest publicly that the US was treating Afghan lives as "cheap". When civilian family members are actually killed in Afghanistan, their relatives do, in fairness, get greater solatia payments than cans of beans and Hershey bars. The logs refer to sums paid of 100,000 Afghani per corpse, equivalent to about £1,500.

The US military likes to pretend their strikes are very precise and kills few civilians

This is what you said. If you'd been paying attention, you would have noticed that the military kept changing the rules of engagement, trying to reduce civilian deaths. They wouldn't have done this if their strikes were very precise and killed few civilians.

Exactly. Add to this that the US has dragged other nations into their criminal wars. More people have died at the hands of US forces committing war crimes than any other nation over the last two decades.

Again, this is not to say other countries aren't doing this, but to claim that taking down Sadam for gassing 30 000 people by killing more than 10 fold people is fine is just wrong.

I know I'll get modded down by the US patriots, but war crimes are war crimes. No escaping it, no matter how just you think they

Vietnam wasn't a war, it was a police action. We were there at the behest of south vietnam government. We were basically "hired guns". War requires occupation, which means that not only are there troops there, but we're also the government. Unlike the situation in Iraq where we overthrew the government and installed our own.

The US went into Vietnam because we were asked by FRANCE, who wanted to keep their little Asian colonial empire, which was rapidly ending as Vietnam was struggling for independence.

And no, he's not saying that 9/11 is the same as Vietnam, what he's saying is that we in American are a bunch of hypocrites. If someone does something to us, it's terrorrism, if we bomb the shit out of someone else, it's liberation. If we repel people attacking us we are heroes, if someone else does it it's terrorism. If someo

That's like saying an americano isn't coffee because in one you expose coffee grounds to a small amount of water under pressure after which you dilute it with plain hot water, and in the other you expose coffee grounds to the same volume of liquid as the finished pot will hold. In then end, you still get a coffee flavored drink with caffeine, so the distinction in preparation has little bearing on the physiological effects.

To say that Viet Nam was not a war ignores the fact the multitudes were murdered in

Actually, Kuwait was completely justified. Repelling Sadams forces there was the right thing to do. We pushed Sadam back and re-instanted the legal government and stepped back. Going into Iraq was a lot more muddy though.

And no, France did not control Vietnam anymore. Vietnam officially granted Vietnam independance in 1954, and they were done with it.

And if you think every other government doesn't do exactly the same thing, then you're a fucking retard.

True, but consider that Bush quite freely admits that God told him to invade Iraq and that it was a holy crusade. Shame God couldn't also tell him there were no WMD there. The fact that a Country with frequently elects religious fundamentalist presidents who genuinely believe invisible men are telling them to invade other nations, also has enough nuclear weapons to extinguish all life on the planet. Yes this deserves some serious scrutiny and a man willing to risk his freedom and his life exposing the di

This may be a minor quibble, but the very leaks in discussion here show that there were in fact many instances where WMDs were discovered and recovered in Iraq. The most common were gas-filled artillery shells, and some were even used in IED attacks, seemingly by chance.

It was kept quiet to keep the insurgents from knowing what they had, which seems prudent.

I don't think Wikileaks "goes after" governments, I think they publish what other people give them. I'm sure if there was a someone who had access to the Chinese or French dirty laundry, they'd also publish that. No one has approached them with those, so they can't "go after" them. If you browse around their site, you'll find that they also cover leaks from places other than the U.S., they just haven't had any leaks quite as big as Cablegate or the Iraq war leak.

When exactly North Korea or Libya were involved in wars abroad, leave alone committed war crimes while doing so?

If you compared fuckheadedness of leaders, I guess, all those three would indeed stand out (but then Iran, Saudi Arabia and US-installed current governments of Iraq and Afghanistan, and a large chunk of Africa would have to join them), but this has nothing to do with indiscriminate killing of foreigners, aggressive wars, or other war crimes.

Maybe I got it all wrong, but in amongst all the info exposed, didn't US forces kill a couple of Reuters reporters? Didn't they lie about it? Didn't they say there wasn't any film of the incident when approached (FOI request) for the footage? Didn't that footage then miraculously appear? Ditto for a number of 'friendly fire' incidents?

Accidents happen, and when you're at war they can be bad, but you don't lie and cover it up or it's far more difficult to work out what happened to try and stop it happening again! It's like a four year old saying "it wasn't me", then wikileaks pointing out the chocolate all around your mouth!

Now the US (and others!) are trying to make Wikileaks out to be the bad guy - continuing the analogy, the US is saying "yer, but Wikileaks smells of wee!".

- The Obama administration worked with Republicans during his first few months in office to protect Bush administration officials facing a criminal investigation overseas for their involvement in establishing policies that some considered torture. A "confidential" April 17, 2009, cable sent from the US embassy in Madrid obtained by WikiLeaks details how the Obama administration, working with Republicans, leaned on Spain to derail this potential prosecution.

HOOOLY SHIT! 8-(

I guess the conspiracy theory that the rivalry is all for the cameras is true, like the Looney Tunes Wolf and Sheepdog they're best buds again after they punch out of work...

The cables were the tipping point that led to the Jasmine Revolution. It's not necessarily a peaceful outcome, but it is a step in the right direction when oppressed populaces dispose of their own Western-backed dictators so that they can democratically elect their own leaders.

The ultimate outcome is uncertain, but at the very least, those people will hold a lot less hostility towards Western countries and their people if they're laying in a bed they made with their own hands instead of in one a Western pow

So it's been around 14 years, so basically before Assange it has only awarded one prize to someone who did not already have a nobel peace prize at the time of the award. Having grown up in Sydney I have got to say I am pretty uninterested in this me-too institution. Since I doubt many Australians will do anything worthy of the attention of the Norweigian government or whoever awards these things, maybe starting with Assange they can make it a sort of domestic competition with lesser criteria.

Not to disagree with you on Manning being a hero, but why should the criteria be how much they "risked" rather than how much they accomplished? Wikileaks has released more than just Manning's material.

The Sweden "court system" for this issue is almost a regular medieval political circus [wlcentral.org]. Look at what Sweden has all but promised Assange in his "fair" trial: Solitary confinement before trial without access to his lawyers. Closed door secret court - no one will hear let alone be able to refute any testimonies. Three of the four judges to be (or appointed by) politicians! Not to forget that the case was closed [radsoft.net] before being reopened by, you guessed it, a politician - apparently because they say the girls did not know they were being raped at the time and it is up-to their court of laypersons to decide (I kid you not, crazy system Sweden has, huh). The rabbit hole of deceit by Swedish authorities goes way deeper than most would like to see however - in this case starting with the Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny, lawyer Mr Claes Borgström and their relationship with the Swedish Democrat party [justiceforassange.com] which stands to gain from this circus.

Who in the right mind would not try to fight for a fairer trial than this? I don't care if it is Assange or anyone else, Sweden should be ashamed of these "courts", if you can even call them that.

The only good thing coming out of this abuse is the increased scrutiny on the very broken European extradition laws [wlcentral.org] - and perhaps some Swedish rethinking their leaders (although the last election shows this to be unlikely).

I'm Swedish and this is 100% accurate, +100 Insightful. The Swedish justice system is a huge embarrassment and completely broken. Hopefully this case will shed some light on it so it can be fixed.

You also forgot to mention two other interesting facts of Claes Borgström, both of which you can find in his Wikipedia article [wikimedia.org]. First of all he was the attorney of Thomas Quick, a case that is one of the biggest scandals in Swedish justice history. Basically Quick was mental and admitted to a whole bunch of murders he never committed and was sentenced guilty without a shred of evidence. Secondly Claes Borgström is an extreme left wing feminist nutjob that thinks men has a "collective guilt" against women and should pay a special tax for being men.

Bradley a hero? It seems to me he simply leaked everything he could get his hands on. That makes him a traitor, not a hero.

Now, had he had a grievance with the way things are being done, found evidence of wrongdoing, and released that - he might have a case for being something other than a simple traitor. He didn't do that, though - he downloaded everything classified he could and sent it to a foreign national who he knew would disclose it to the enemies of the US. That's espionage.

How ironic. I have varying opinions on all the past recipients named, but all of them have actually been the center of conflicts, more so than defusing them. So in retrospect, Al Gore winning the Nobel Peace Prize wasn't such a bad idea since most folks agree on global warming and don't launch armed conflicts about the issue.

contrary to what you arrogant and self-centered right wingers in america tend to think, the people around the world think good of assange since he is exposing the SHIT that u.s. perpetrates around the world, ranging from bullying germany to prevent prosecution of the cia agents who kidnapped german citizens and tortured them in syria, to bullying spanish government to put out 3 strikes law to censor people for american copyright interests.

- Touting the importants of the WTO and how everyone should join it and adhere to it's rulings whilst ignoring rulings by the WTO against it

- Putting free speech at the centre of everything America claims to be about, whilst trying to silence the likes of Wikileaks

- Talking about peace, whilst being the largest warmonger of the last 50 years

- Complaining about terrorism whilst having a long history of having funded terrorists

- Patriotic talk of how their military is the greatest, and making fun of countries like France for their military history, whilst having lost or at least definitely failed to win pretty almost every major war or military incursion they've been involved in since World War II (e.g. Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq x2, Afghanistan)

- Talk about how China should stop polluting despite the fact China has far more investment, a far bigger programme, and a far better ratio of renewable energy use than the US and a third of oil use despite having over 4 times the population

Really, the list goes on, the case with Assange and American attempts to supress Wikileaks is just one of many examples of American hypocrisy lost in a sea of such problems. Americans fear the rise of China, India and so forth and talk of how dangerous the rise of these countries are, when really, the only thing that's causing the decline of the US is it's own complete and utter hypocrisy and the knock on effects of that.

OK, I agree with you. I just fail to see why political parties have a single damn thing to do with this and why you assume Parent was an "arrogant and self-centered right winger". Can't we keep this civilized and party free?

I wouldn't post ac but other wise I’ll get modded down to oblivion by a bunch of propaganda swallowing Americans that want to be able to kill who ever they want when ever they want. Any way Assange is a stand up man that is willing to stand up to you nation of trolls so he deserves many medals.

You're again, a liar. I have criticized every goddamn one of those countries you've mentioned. You are morally bankrupt if you think that Israel can escape all criticism (and that's what you're arguing, don't lie about that) because other countries also do bad things. People like you disgust me.

Nya nya nya! As much as you criticize Israel? You probably criticize everything and everyone, then. I'm sure you're a hoot at parties. Sure, granted, you're a paragon of fairness. Wow, one out of billions who aren't. Congrats.

You can't even defend your position so you just make up other people's position; you know you've lost the argument when you have to keep saying stuff like "you probably argue X, which is bad!" rather than refute the actual arguments made. And at least I get invited to parties, troll.

You started with the ad hominem. What's your argument? You criticize everyone equally? Pratically impossible, and definitely stupid if it's true. Anyone sensible will save their criticisms for when truly deserved, and in that neighborhood and in this world, Israel IS THE MOST MORAL ARMY POSSIBLE. That Israelis are brutal? Brutal is firing a laser-guided missile at a school bus, murdering a child, then giving out candy in the street to celebrate the "victory". Brutal is what's happening in Syria. The

So you're saying Israel is a repressive regime? Do you know anything about the Middle East or the world for that matter? I bet you view Israel as a far greater problem area than Syria, but Syria is the one that has a repressive regime. Israel has a Democracy with citizens of all religions. Homosexuals can walk the streets holding their lover's hand without getting stoned to death. Christians don't run in terror from angry mobs, expect in the West Bank and Gaza. What an unusual repressive regime.

But it also kicks families out of the house where they've lived for generations. It built a wall that separates farmers from their fields. Israel goes out of its way to disrupt the lives of normal Palestinian families. It's not oppressive to the people it likes, but it is oppressive to the people it oppresses. The fact that there are also people who are not oppressed by the Israeli government doesn't change this simple fact.

Unfortunately, racists on either side are quick to highlight A or C. I'm not so fanatically politically correct that I'm going to dismiss A (we don't really know enough about the brain nor have we devised any suitable tests to determine) and C (it is human nature to support your own group, so if one group is already well established it might foster further success for that same group), but maybe there's quite a lot of B.

Why would you compare the two? Obama did nothing to deserve a Nobel peace prize (and most disappointingly, still hasn't since) unless you count bringing grammar back to the White House. Assange has actually done things to further world peace, whether you agree with the means or not. The two are not comparable.

I still think the news from the North Africa and the Middle East is some of the best news I've heard since the fall of the Berlin Wall and Soviet Russia, it makes me hopeful for us as a species.

It just wouldn't say that they are mostly successful yet. Hopefully they will be, and hopefully the revolutionary spirit spreads to the bigger, nastier, fish in the region (Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Iran), and hopefully most of these revolutions don't get taken over by people worse